Richard Hughes

Richard Hughes was born on April 19, 1900 in Surrey of Welsh parentage, worked as a journalist, and lived for a period at Laugharne Castle in south Wales, where his neighbour was the poet, Dylan Thomas. He wrote only four novels, the most famous of which is A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), which in the USA is known by the title, "The Innocent Voyage". He wrote also In Hazard, and volumes of children's stories including The Spider's Palace. He was also a published poet.

His most important work is the trilogy The Human Predicament, of which only the first 2 volumes, "The Fox in The Attic" and "The Wooden Shepherdess", were completed before his death. In these he follows the course of European history from the 1920s through the Second World War, including real characters (eg Hitler's escape following the abortive Munich putsch) as well as fictional.

Richard Hughes died on April 28, 1976.